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GEORGE MASON

George Mason University recently devised a plan to create opportunity for male and female students without eliminating any varsity sports.

To fund the three additional sports, the university added a $3.50 student activity fee. It is an alternative open to the 20,000-student public school that might not be as viable for the area's smaller private schools.

The school's enrollment is 56 percent female; 43 percent of its athletes are female. George Mason has nine varsity sports for women: cross-country, indoor track, outdoor track, soccer, softball, basketball, volleyball, lacrosse and tennis.

George Mason expects its ratio of male students to female students to remain constant through 2001. By adding the new sports, it projects its proportion of female athletes to reach 54 percent by the same year. Such a number would bring the school within 2 percentage points of its student body's female enrollment.

Prior to the student-fee plan, the university had debated eliminating men's volleyball and men's and women's tennis to comply with Title IX. However, the student body demonstrated so much support for those programs that the school's board of visitors chose to keep them and approved funding for the others.

The school is building a $10 million natatorium and will add women's swimming for the 1999-2000 season. It has a women's rowing club team, which will gain varsity status and add up to 60 roster spots in fall 1997.

The university will add men's swimming the same season it adds women's swimming.

"The overriding factor is doing the right thing for students at George Mason," Athletic Director Tom O'Connor said. "Opportunity for women here is here to stay."

George Mason's 10 men's varsity sports are cross-country, soccer, baseball, basketball, wrestling, volleyball, tennis, golf, outdoor track and indoor track—a sport in which the Patriots won the 1996 NCAA title.

Although George Mason is not eliminating any men's teams, it is considering restricting the number of men who participate, by reducing the number of nonscholarship athletes on teams with large rosters, such as baseball.

One factor that could change the school's efforts is the possibility of adding football, which currently has club status. The board of visitors recently asked the administration to study such a proposal. O'Connor said the football proposal is in the fact-finding stages.

© Copyright 1997 The Washington Post Company

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